Conquering the world one country at a time.

February 11, 2016July 30, 2017

Conquering the Czech Republic Skywalk.

If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you’ll have seen that I went to the Czech Republic a fortnight ago.

It was a very spur of the moment break away, booking the flights and hotel on the Wednesday, and travelling on the Friday. I originally planned to travel alone, but continuing with the spontaneous nature of the trip, my friend Solo decided to come along too, booking his flights just four hours before we had to be at the airport. Beat that for impulsive travel.

Though I flew into and stayed in Prague, my main reason for visiting the country was to climb the imposing “monster” on the top of this mountain:

Resembling some kind of crazy roller coaster from the theme park of nightmares (Alton Towers perhaps?), this is actually the Skywalk in the sleepy little town of Dolní Morava.

Where is the Czech Republic Skywalk?

The Skywalk was my reason for travelling 958 miles from the comfort and warmth of my flat in Reading, and for trekking 121 miles from the capital of the Czech Republic. Maybe I’m as crazy as the architects who designed the impressive structure which sits proudly at the top of the tallest ski slope in the Dolní Morava resort, but as soon as I saw this story in the Daily Mail, I knew that one of my missions for 2016 would be to climb and conquer the Skywalk.

And a mission it was. As I said, Dolní Morava is about 121 miles from Prague – which may not seem that long (it’s roughly the same distance from London to Weymouth, which isn’t far in the grand scheme of things), but unfortunately there was no straightforward route for getting there…

How to get to the Czech Republic Skywalk.

From our hotel in Malešická we ended up taking a bus to Florenc, then a metro to Praha hl.n., the main station in Prague. From there it was a train to Ústí n.Orlicí, and then another train to Lichkov. Once in Lichkov, we then had to find a taxi to take us to Dolní Morava – which was possibly the hardest part of the journey, as a) neither of us spoke Czech, b) it was a Sunday afternoon with zero people around, plus c) Lichkov is a tiny town out in the middle of nowhere, meaning we couldn’t just use the Uber app. In fact, Wikipedia suggests Lichkov’s population is just 552 – half the number of people who follow me on Twitter.

Lichkov did however have a train station with a platform, unlike some of the “stations” that the second train stopped at (if you’re curious, Google Têchonín and Mladkov).

On the plus – and one thing that I absolutely loved about the public transport in the Czech Republic – travelling 121 miles actually only cost the equivalent price of a Big Mac meal in the UK. We paid about £14 each for the round trip. We certainly couldn’t have travelled 242 miles for £14 in the UK by train (not unless we’d managed to bag a super cheap, advance, off peak, sale ticket anyway).

Once we arrived in Dolní Morava, after four hours of epic-but-cheap travelling, we were pooped, but undeterred. I had gotten this far, I wasn’t going to just give up – “always carry on”, that’s my motto. I wanted to get up that mountain and climb that Skywalk. So we bought our combi-chair-lift-and-Skywalk ticket, and did the last stretch of the journey up the mountain surrounded by skiers and snowboarders, who were much more suitably dressed for the -5c temperatures than us.

The mammoth trek was totally worth it though. The Skywalk really is a feat of engineering genius, my pictures don’t do it justice at all:

Czech Republic Skywalk – the lowdown.

The Skywalk, which only opened on 5 December 2015, is a 55m (180ft) high wooden walkway on top of a mountain. The baby of architect Zdeněk Fránek – who first dreamed up the crazy construction in 2012 – it is designed to be both fun and educational. Oh, and it has a helter skelter-type slide from the top to the bottom. So what’s not to get excited about?

As you walk up the gradual incline of the wooden walkway, there are plaques telling you about the history of the construction, and pinpointing areas of interest on the horizon. Unfortunately it was absolutely freezing when we scaled the Skywalk, so we didn’t really stop to read much, but here are a few facts we learned:

The Skywalk is located at the top of a mountain 1,116m (3,661ft) above sea level.

The walkway spirals upwards with a length of 700m (2,300ft).

It is made of 600m³ (21,200ft³) of larch wood and 345 tonnes of steel.

Apparently it can resist winds of up to 186mph – I’m not sure exactly how windy that is, but it was extremely windy while we were up there.

When it’s time to get down, the 100m (328ft) long helter-skelter slide can take visitors back to ground level – unfortunately this was closed when we went. Boo.

Once at the top, you can take in views of the Králický Sněžník massif, the Morava river and the Krkonoše mountain range. You can also learn from information plaques about the history of the adjacent valley, and about the clouds as a meteorological phenomenon. But as I said, it was very windy up there, so we didn’t hang about learning the names of clouds.

What I can tell you is that the whole experience was pretty awesome, and well worth the trek from Prague.

I’ve since found out that the Dolní Morava resort is open all year round, with skiing and snowboarding down the mountains in the colder winter months, and hiking, mountain biking and Segway tours there when the snow melts. Apparently in the summer there is also a water park, an “adrenaline park” and a picnic and BBQ area.

I’d love to go back there in the summer, just to see how different it is, and also so I can say I’ve actually done the slide.

Oh my gosh! Kudos for how you are living your life and the choices you are making! If I didn’ have to get up so early for my job, I’d be sitting here hours wanting to read each post first! I’ll have to settle for following your blog!

I love your ‘Always carry on’ moto, it’s also my moto too. hehe.
Last minute, spontaneous trips are the best kind of trips. It looks and sounds like a great time was had. Love the photos! The Skywalk looks AMAZING! xx

Ahhh thanks Sarah – it’s just kind of become my motto, originally “carry on” was referring to my hand luggage and how I always go hand luggage only, but the phrase had become more poignant, it’s grown to mean so much more, especially after recent events. But yes, 100% with you on spontaneous trips – the ones with no agenda where you just go with the flow are always the better ones in my experience 😀 xx

It is pretty high up, so completely understandable if you’re not a fan of heights. But the incline was so slight as you walked up, it didn’t even feel like you were getting higher as you walked up! I wish I’d managed to go on the slide though 👎🏻 x

The views from the top of the skywalk look amazing but I think I would have succumbed to my fear of heights before I got to the top. Sounds like Czech Republic is a really cheap and interesting place though which I’ve never thought of visiting until reading your post!

this looks absolutely amazing. I have been on a slide down like this one in London at the Olympic park and its the highest closed in slide in the world and my god it was amazing. This one look fantastic as well, id love to visit here.

It actually reminds me of the orbit in Stratford but a lot more beautiful and statuesque. How cool that your friend Solo came along although I would have had a heart attack booking my tickets 4 hours beforehand lol. Where are you thinking of going next? When is it that you start your new job in London? x

wow wow wow. That’s the type of place I look for when traveling. I always try to climb as high as possible for the view. In Norway, I was getting up to the ski jumping towers, they were closed during the summer. But this puts the experience to the whole new level.
Pity, it is not really close to Prague.

That. Looks. Incredible. I love a good spur of the moment trip and good for you for just going for it. I had no idea that was in the Czech Republic but it’s been some time since I was last there. Maybe this is a good excuse to return…?

Your post is so well-written and describes your experience so well. What a journey to make to go all the way there! What was it that inspired you to go? As for me, just looking at it gives me vertigo. I’m not good with heights 😉

Can’t beat a spontaneous trip!!! It looks soooo cold there but still amazingly beautiful. What an amazing feat of engineering. And that slide….what fun! You’ll definitely have to go back in the summer and try it out.

That’s a incredible slide in Dolni Morava! I’ve not heard of this place, but I can understand when you say it’s worth the trek from Prague. I love your photos too; summer scenes are stunning, but so too are these wintry landscapes.

Looks pretty amazing and I am glad you made it up there! It does seem like it was freezing though and a climb up that thing couldn’t have been easy but you were determined and travelled all the way from the capital to get here so that’s really good that you managed to make it to the top of the skywalk. I love how you can make spontaneous travel plans like that Becca (I would struggle with visa issues if I were to do that) and yeah, seems like the 122-mile journey was really cheap on the public transport (a lot of places would seem cheaper as compared to the UK, no doubt). The view of the river and mountains from the skywalk is breathtaking!